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New Study Finds Hazardous Plastics in 90 Percent of Household Items; Israel-Bound Flight Diverts to Saudi Arabia After Violent Incident; Israel Condemns Hijacking Attempt Aboard Flydubai Flight; New Questions on Investigation Into Alleged Gang Rape at Cornell; States Take Action to Help Lower Soaring Fuel Prices; FTC Launches Probe Into Rogue A.I. Models. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired September 30, 2026 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:00:00]

JOSEPH ALLEN, PROFESSOR, HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: -- for your viewers in this study is that most of these chemicals, the vast, vast majority, are never tested at all to a sufficient level that we can even understand what's an exposure risk.

Now think about that. If you're using a product, you want to know that a chemical in the product, for example, that your kids are using every single day has been thoroughly tested and vetted to be sure it's safe and it's not toxic. That is a bare minimum I think every parent, every adult can appreciate and knows that that's the way it should be.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah, certainly. I think we're all like inventorying the things in our house at the moment.

(LAUGH)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Yeah.

KEILAR: Joseph, thank you so much. Obviously, a lot more to this discussion, but we will continue it another time. Thanks for being with us.

ALLEN: Thanks for having me on.

KEILAR: New Hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

Chaos in the cockpit, a flight bound for Tel Aviv diverted to Saudi Arabia after Israeli officials say one of the pilots stabbed the other pilot mid-flight in a suspected hijack attempt.

Plus, new questions surrounding an alleged gang rape inside a fraternity at Cornell University. What we're learning about a police transcript that the district attorney never received.

SANCHEZ: And the FTC launching an investigation into major A.I. companies and their rapidly evolving artificial intelligence models.

We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

KEILAR: We do have Breaking News on that possible hijacking attempt on a flight traveling from the UAE to Israel this morning. The plane safely made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia, but this was a scary, scary experience for these passengers. After Israeli officials say one pilot stabbed the other pilot in the cockpit, we're now seeing these terrifying moments from inside the plane as the violent incident unfolded.

One passenger recording this video as the plane was said to be dropping more than 17,000 feet in just two minutes. You can see the aircraft shaking, panic setting in during this video. We've now heard from many passengers who said they thought they were going to die.

SANCHEZ: Just moments ago, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu greeted the man who officials say helped break into the cockpit and subdued the pilot who attacked the other one. You can see bloodstains still on his shirt and his shoes. Earlier today, a passenger reported this message just moments after the attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are here on the plane right now. We have taken control of the terrorists. We are about to land. Anyone who hears me, we need help. We are landing in Tabuk, probably in the Saudi Arabia area, an unknown and unfamiliar area. Everyone on the plane is healthy and whole, except for the pilot. We need help.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: CNN Aviation Correspondent, Pete Muntean is with us now. Pete, some stunning developments.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, clearly a threat from inside the cockpit here. Israeli officials say the flight's first officer stabbed the captain and then tried to crash the airplane. And right now, we understand that passengers and off-duty Flydubai pilots rushed forward and forced their way into the cockpit and subdued the first officer.

The track from FlightRadar24 really tells the story here. Flydubai Flight 1073 departed Dubai and climbed to a cruising altitude of about 34,000 feet. About two hours into the flight, a dive, then a climb, then another big dive. I looked at the data. A loss of more than 16,000 feet in 35 seconds. That is a blistering descent rate.

The speed increased from about 460 miles per hour, that's normal, to 700 miles per hour, nearing the speed of sound there. Likely explains the photos of the plane's rudder, which is used to move the nose left and right, partially broken off there. You can see it in that image.

Any way you slice it, a terrifying ride for these passengers. And now begins the investigation of how this happened. The cockpit voice recorder will be able to give investigators some more insight here. Also the flight data recorder, which captures way more data than we can get from flight tracking right now. This sounds a lot like previous incidents of attempted or successful suicide by pilot.

In 1999, Egypt Air Flight 990 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 30 minutes after leaving New York. The NTSB determined the first officer put the plane in a nosedive. In 2015, you probably remember the Germanwings Flight. A pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit, crashed into the French Alps.

And then in 2023, this is more recent, an off-duty pilot riding in the cockpit of a Horizon Air jet tried to shut off the engines, but the pilots were able to subdue him. Since 9/11, aviation has been so worried about securing the cockpit from passengers, but clearly the pilots themselves still pose a threat. We don't really know the motive here yet.

Was this an act of terrorism, like Israeli officials describe, or was this something else? Could this really bring up the debate of pilot mental health once again?

[14:05:00]

This has come up repeatedly since that Horizon Air incident in 2023, and pilots really risk losing their ability to fly if they seek out mental health treatment. It's sort of this lie or fly paradigm. This sort of box that they are sort of shoved into. A bill to change that just past the Senate. It's now in the hands of the House could mean some big sweeping change here in the United States for pilots that better seek mental health treatment that we don't know that's totally the case here just yet.

KEILAR: Yeah, just horrific and just so thankful that everyone made it safely around.

MUNTEAN: No doubt.

KEILAR: Pete, thank you so much. Let's talk more about all of this with CNN Aerospace Analyst, Miles O'Brien, and retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent, Jason Pack. Jason, first off, just talk about the rarity of threats inside the cockpit when you're talking about cases like this. But also, as we just saw, there are some examples and they're incredibly scary.

JASON PACK, RETIRED FBI SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT: They are Brianna. That's right. And as everybody's been saying, we've tried to make those cockpits so hardened and so impenetrable that we don't really sometimes think about the people on the other side of it. And that's the insider threat that we probably don't take a close enough look at right now.

Having said that, today though, like it appears when you boil all this down that when you just look at it from a perspective, good has defeated evil today, and it was close because of the heroism of everybody on that plane and that pilot. So there's a lot to unwrap here. There's a lot of investigative activity to be done in several countries. But when you look at it, right now, it seems to be what the Israelis are saying the terrorism related thing. But that's a good hypothesis. But even though something might seem like that, you really have to get that evidence. And that's where we're going to see in the days ahead. These investigators going with these particular questions of the folks.

SANCHEZ: Miles, how are you viewing this?

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AEROSPACE ANALYST: Wow, it's just a lot. First of all, the heroism of the individuals, everyday folks on that plane to take matters into their own hands and save the day is extraordinary.

And it makes me think, Boris, of how kind of a switch flipped at 9/11. I'm thinking of the Shanksville crash, Pennsylvania. That aircraft was probably headed to the U.S. Capitol, but the passengers took action. And sadly, they all died, but they saved the craft from hitting that target.

Up until that point, passengers were instructed to just remain docile during a hijacking. The switch was flipped on that day and passengers today understand the consequences of what is going on. The other side of it here is you have an enemy within. We have an entire system built around the assumption that the two people sitting at the pointy end of the aircraft are on our side.

And when that switch flips there, it's almost impossible to guard against it. It's kind of the elephant in the room for aviation. We've fixed the engines, the avionics. We have better aircraft. They fly longer. They have more redundancy. But we still don't know what's going on between the ears of the first officer.

KEILAR: Yeah. Miles, talk about what this is like, because when we see the dip and Mary Schiavo was just saying that this plane was dropping at a 63-degree angle. Pete was telling us it reached 700 miles per hour about at one point, the rudder obviously popping off, at least in part there.

The video that we see, I think maybe in the recovery, because I don't know how people could have actually been walking down the aisle during that dip or as they were immediately recovering from it. What were they going through?

O'BRIEN: Well, during that dip, there probably would have been zero gravity. It would have been like you're on the space station or NASA, as they call it, that vomit comet, that aircraft that does this. They wouldn't have been able to move around well. But clearly, those images were from after that. But that's a precipitous fall.

And I will say this, the rudder coming off, that's significant. But if you had to pick a control service on a day like today with very light winds in Saudi Arabia, that's the one you want to lose. You can land the aircraft.

And so let's not forget there were two off-duty pilots on board able to come in and get that aircraft safe on the ground. So many things lined up to make this a reasonably good ending here. It could have been so tragic in so many other ways.

And you've got to wonder if the person in the cockpit had succeeded, what was the target for that dive? Was that person headed for Tel Aviv and some other location? The consequences of this just ripple on.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Jason, to that point, what kind of evidence are investigators looking for when they piece together questions like where would this have been headed if it were a hijacking and whether the intent was terrorism to begin with?

[14:10:00]

PACK: Well, it's going to be a lot --

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: Right. That's an important question, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Sorry, Miles. That question was for Jason.

O'BRIEN: No, you go. That's more your department anyway.

PACK: Miles is good. Miles is great. He's been covering this beat a long time.

From an investigative standpoint, though, the investigators there will look for that motive. And that is why behind this, was it headed somewhere? Was it just designed to crash and kill the folks, the Jewish people from Israel? All those are questions that remain unanswered.

Even though there's a lot of information early on, the investigators in these countries will be looking at the digital footprint to try to find the connective tissue. What did the pilot do last night before he got on the plane? Who was he talking to? What did his bank account say? All these pieces of information will have to go through several countries, including probably the United States.

I'm sure the Legal Attache Office there in Riyadh has offered any type of assistance that may be needed, as well as the larger United States government.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, we hope to get some answers on that soon. Jason Pack, Miles O'Brien, appreciate you both.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

PACK: Thank you all.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, state officials taking matters into their own hands as gas and diesel prices soar to jaw-dropping prices. How more than a dozen states are taking steps to try and ease the pain at the pump.

Plus, Vice President J.D. Vance visiting Texas ahead of the midterms, while new polling shows Democrats have some momentum there. KEILAR: And one organization is using A.I. to help Latino voters stay informed ahead of the election. We have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

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[14:16:14]

KEILAR: Fuel costs getting worse for Americans. Gas prices keep climbing while diesel, a key fuel for freight, farming and construction, hit a record high last week as the war with Iran continues to disrupt global oil supplies. Now, states are taking matters into their own hands, rolling out new measures to help bring down those costs.

CNN's Matt Egan is here with details about this. All right, Matt, what are states doing here?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Brianna, as Washington debates what to do next to try to lower costs, states, they are not waiting around. They are taking a variety of actions aimed at making it cheaper for drivers, truckers and for farmers.

And this is happening really across the country. Right? It's happening in some red states like Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama, but also in blue states like in Massachusetts and in California and battleground states like Michigan and in Georgia as well.

This shows that states, they are taking seriously these frustrations. They're hearing from voters about just how expensive it is to fill up at the gas pump. So what exactly are they doing? Well, some of them are temporarily suspending or lowering taxes on gasoline and on diesel.

This is happening in Indiana, Georgia, Illinois and Kentucky. This can be helpful. For example, Georgia just yesterday, suspended its $0.33 a gallon tax on gasoline and gas prices in that state, they're already down by about $0.13 in just the past day.

Now, other states, they're moving up when they're allowing cheaper winter-blend gas to be used. That can also be helpful. For example, in California, analysts say that could save about $0.25 a gallon, a little less so in Michigan.

The other thing that we're seeing is that states are boosting what's known as red-dyed diesel. This is happening in Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Now, red-dyed diesel, it's the same as regular diesel. It's just dyed because it's untaxed and it's normally reserved for off highways, for uses like tractors, for farmers. Making it available on the road, that does help a bit.

It does make it a little bit cheaper. So you put all this together, these moves, they do help on the margin, but none of them really are game changers. Now, when we look at prices, really before the war, gasoline was not a problem, right? $2.98 a gallon before the war was the national average. $4.43 is the average now. Now, it's true, this is not as high as gas prices were back in May when they were above $4.50. Not as high as four years ago when they were above $5 a gallon. But make no mistake, this is historically expensive for this time of year. I went back and looked at the national average on September 30th, going back in history for the last 10 years or so.

And you can just see, this is where we are now. It is just so much more expensive, even more expensive than it was in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, and miles above the prices during COVID and of course, before COVID.

And we're seeing a similar situation in diesel as well. Diesel prices, $6.41 a gallon is the national average, just off the all-time high. And again, this is just dramatically more expensive than it was last year and the year before.

So bottom line here, I talked to veteran analyst, Andy Lipow, and he said states, they are taking action where they can control things. But he also pointed out what they can't control is what's happening in Russia and what's happening in the Middle East. And those are the real drivers here.

And so analysts say the best way to get diesel and gas prices down is to end the war with Iran. Back to you, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yeah. They're doing what they can, but they cannot do that. Matt Egan, thank you so much.

Coming up, the FTC launching an investigation after weeks of artificial intelligence models going rogue. What this could mean as the president calls for companies to self-regulate.

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[14:24:43]

SANCHEZ: It was just yesterday that some of the top A.I. executives in the world met with President Trump at the White House, pledging to self-regulate their technology. But now, the Federal Trade Commission says it is going to take a deeper look at those tech companies and conduct an industry-wide probe into threats that A.I. could potentially pose to all of us.

[14:25:00]

CNN A.I. Correspondent, Hadas Gold joins us now with the details. Hadas, this investigation is the first official U.S. enforcement action looking into rogue A.I. agents. Why is it coming from the FTC?

HADAS GOLD, CNN A.I. CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this would be the first major official U.S. government probe into A.I. and its agents, and the harm that they could cause. This was first reported by the New York Post. And according to these reports, the FTC plans to ask for information and potentially even subpoena some of these major companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. And they're looking to see whether their products have violated existing federal laws that prohibit companies from unfair and deceptive practices related to their A.I. agents.

I think this is really important because this is a similar tactic we've actually seen from some of the states. Florida's attorney general, when they have sued companies like OpenAI, they've specifically decided these product liability laws, saying that ChatGPT, for example, was deceptively designed, that it had failed to perform safely. This is part of the Trump administration's position that existing laws would be enough when it comes to regulating A.I.

That's not how a lot of people in the industry feel about it, especially on some of these, you know, new ways that A.I. is being used. But this could be the very first major action we're seeing from the administration. And actually, the FTC Chair, Andrew Ferguson, talked a little bit about this just last week at a Reuters event when he talked about that the existing laws, they are enough to regulate this technology. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW FERGUSON, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION OF THE UNITED STATES: But I don't think the fact that this technology is exciting, interesting, and is acting in ways that sometimes or often surprise its creators, that we ought to be rushing out of the present toolbox. These tools have always played the principal guardrail role in our economic and legal system. And I think we still should be using those until we know these are insufficient.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLD: And Andrew Ferguson, the FTC Chair, he was actually at that White House meeting, sitting around the table yesterday with all of those top tech executives like Elon Musk, like Jeff Bezos, like Dario Amodei, discussing this new White House accord that came out on this sort of self-policing and these external audits and these reviews, where President Trump himself talked about how this should be self- regulation, talked about how this accord would just be morally binding, and that he does not want to get involved with a heavy hand from the government regulating A.I. for fear, of course, that China would then race ahead. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Hadas Gold, thank you so much for the update.

Still ahead, some Republicans breaking with the president on his immigration crackdown. We'll speak with a Congressman who's warning about the dangers of targeting migrants who are following the law.

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